US "Pay-TV" Subscriber Base Record Pace Erosion ( What's Your Experience?)

[MeatHookGekko]

US pay-TV subscriber base eroding at record pace

MoffettNathanson estimates that US pay-TV lost a total of about 900,000 subs in Q3 2023 – a worst-ever third quarter for the industry. That poor result left US pay-TV shrinking at a record pace of 7.3%....With virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs) such as YouTube TV unable to pick up the slack, the US pay-TV industry lost about 900,000 subscribers in Q3 2023, a worst-ever result for a third quarter.... That poor result, the research firm added, left the total pay-TV industry shrinking at a record pace of -7.3%, widened from a year-ago decline of -5.9%.

It also left pay-TV penetration of occupied households (including vMVPDs) at just 54.8% – a level last seen in 1989, five years before the debut of DirecTV...Drilling down on Q3 results, traditional pay-TV providers (cable, telco and satellite) shed 1.97 million subscribers, widened from a loss of 1.94 million in the year-ago quarter. Within that category, US cable lost 1.10 million video subs in Q3, versus a loss of -1.09 million in the year-ago period. Satellite operators (Dish Network and DirecTV) lost 667,000 subs in Q3, versus -567,000 in the year-ago quarter. Telco TV providers lost 198,000 video subs in the period, an improvement when compared to a year-ago loss of -250,000 subs.

vMVPDs, meanwhile, added 1.08 million in Q3, down from a year-ago gain of about 1.34 million. Despite those gains, vMVPDs recaptured only 21.7% of traditional pay-TV's subscriber losses in the period...Meanwhile, YouTube TV continues to dominate the vMVPD category...YouTube TV added about 350,000 subs in Q3, extending its total to 7 million – representing 40% of the vMVPD sector's 18 million subscriber total...."Based on our Q3 estimate, YouTube TV has now surpassed Dish Network [6.72 million satellite TV subs at the end of Q3] to become the country's fourth largest MVPD of any kind...At the current trajectory, YouTube TV should pass DirecTV for third place in less than a year."

'Re-bundling' unlikely to resolve pay-TV's woes..."Giving customers more value for their dollars by combining linear and streaming for a single price (at least notionally) is clearly a step in the right direction if the industry is to make any serious effort to preserve the linear model....But a truly serious effort would require more than just one or two participants defending the model. It would require all participants defending the model...."

https://www.lightreading.com/video-streaming/us-pay-tv-subscriber-base-eroding-at-record-pace


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I thought this would be an interesting thread topic. I'm certainly not asking anyone to doxx themselves, but am curious, if folks want to share, what are their experiences with the current slate of cable/streaming services out there? Are you a cord cutter? What pushed you over the edge? Did you pick up a service and vow to never return to it? What do you see as the best value for your situation/dollar right now? Do you feel you got good return on the dollar spent for each respective service? Why or why not? How do you feel about ads and cost premiums to remove ads? Have you been "priced out"? Did you ever renegotiate with a service? How did that go? What's your take on the looming loss of physical media combined with the current streaming/cable situation? Any other issue dealing with this topic that you might want to share?

I'll also use this thread to update news, notes and happenings with the various streaming services. Thanks in advance for sharing.

 

[Wor-Gar]

This is an interesting subject. I know a lot of people who have switched but none of them seem any happier. Too many choices, a lot of junk to sift through, gets pricey when you add a lot of apps, etc.

Bundling is the inevitable future, as it was with cable 30 years ago. When that's done, you will get more bang for your buck, at least in the short term until everyone's on it, but prices will always rise.

 

[Skyroes]

I ditched traditional cable in 2015, mostly because of the absence of choice and lack of value for price.

We have limited competition in Canada so typically you started off with basic cable mostly comprised of channels that you’d never watch and you’d have to add packages to get to the programs that you wanted to watch. Even when paying for these packages, you’d be forced to pay for channels that you didn’t want. Add internet on top of that and it was just money out the door.

I jumped on the Netflix bandwagon early on and was a consistent customer for over a decade but that came to an end when they stopped family account sharing. I also didn’t think that the content being offered at the time was worth the price increases that they were putting through.

Right now our household has Prime, Crave and Disney+ (we don’t pay for Disney). I only really use Disney to watch The Mandalorian and some of the other SW content.

Part of the allure of these streaming services was being able enjoy your content of choice without being bombarded by advertising and commercials. Prime apparently will now be introducing advertisements unless you opt to pay more. That’s a turn off.

I would probably say 50-60% the content on these streaming series don’t appeal to me and not a single one has everything that you want to watch.

In a sense we are going full circle and streaming is beginning to mirror the cable format (lots of junk content, advertisements, inflexibility).

At the end of the day, I’m never going to pay for more than 1 or 2 of these services, they need to earn our patronage by offering superior content and selection, right now I don’t see much differentiation.

I downloaded PlutoTV a few months back, it’s great if you just want to throw something on and it’s FREE.

 

[e30ernest]

I'm not in the US, but I don't have cable now either. Regular broadcast TV here also now needs those silly tuner boxes to work so I no longer have regular local TV either. For the past 3 years my household has been 100% streaming.

The upside:
1. Kids watch less TV so it is easier to get them to bed during bedtime.
2. Local TV is full of junk here so I'm glad I don't get to see that.

The downside:
1. 100% of my news comes from online sources so I don't get to see any local news. Sometimes I miss stuff (like local holiday announcements or class cancelations).
2. Overall, the cost of Disney+, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Crunchyroll totals up to more than what I would be paying just for cable.
3. I am still missing a lot of shows I want to watch due to the sheer number of streaming services.